Conventionally, multiple pieces of management hardware are required to manage computing functions of multiple computing platforms, where each management hardware device has a single instance of management firmware for a respective one of the computing platforms. There is an associated cost for each computing platform to be managed in a plurality of computing platforms, such as server platforms, because each managed computing platform requires a separate management hardware device. Additionally, in order to implement IPMI message transmission, a separate physical network device and a unique network address will be needed for each of the managed computing platform. Accordingly, introducing an additional computing platform to be managed can incur additional cost for the management hardware.
Therefore, heretofore unaddressed needs still exist in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.